


Dysthymia

by Rho_Jaihtlyn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Depression, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Langst, Mention of Lance's friends, Short, Symbolism, Use your imagination, not by name, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 08:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19720366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rho_Jaihtlyn/pseuds/Rho_Jaihtlyn
Summary: Dysthymia:dys·thy·mi·aPsychiatrynoun: persistent mild depression.





	Dysthymia

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for mentions of depression, denial, drowning, unintentional mental abuse (denial or ignorance of mental disorders), unnamed characters giving unreliable and unhealthy advice
> 
> Cross-posted on instagram @jaihtlyn

Lance wasn’t always the happy-go-lucky type of guy.

He wasn’t always the flirt, the comedian, the excited, reliable friend everyone knew they could count on.

No, this isn’t some story of how Lance grew out of his shell as a child, or had some traumatic life-threatening experience that showed him how great life is, how grateful he should be to be alive. This isn’t about who he was in the past at all.

This is Lance now, maybe at night before he goes to bed or is on the way to the zoo with his friends or sitting around the dinner table with his family. Surrounded by people he loves or sitting in the sand at the beach by himself. This Lance comes and goes like the tide, pushed and pulled not by the moon above all our heads but the chemicals inside his own. 

Sometimes, the high tide (the rising sea level, crashing waves, flooding waters, higher higher  _ higher he’s drowning now why won’t he swim– _ ) 

Sometimes it’s caused by an earthquake. Shifting tectonic plates, the sea stirring, shoving out a tsunami that grows and grows and once it hits land it destroys and crushes and harms and _kills_ (kills relationships, kills careers and motivation, kills self esteem, kills the _body_ ). It leaves evidence (a _reason_ ) for why he was, for however long, suffocating in the water.

But most of the time it’s not caused by anything special. The tide comes in naturally, when the moon is in just the right position, threatens to get his feet wet and pull the sand from underneath him if he doesn’t move out of it’s reach.

It’s worse, though, when he’s unable to get out of the water as it rises slowly. Maybe the sand anchors him, keeps him from taking refuge on the dry land. Maybe it’s fear that holds him there. Maybe it sneaks up on him, too quick for him to flee before it catches his ankles. 

Regardless, Lance is stuck there, helplessly watches as the sand slips away, making holes under his feet until he’s in the water up to his ankles, then his knees, his thighs, his hips, chest, neck, until he’s buried buried  _ drowning– _

And then someone walks by, up on dry land, and asks him, “Why don’t you just get out of the water?”

“I can’t,” he tells them, “I need help.” But they don’t listen. They watch as he’s pulled out to sea, energy waning and water threatening to fill his lungs. They watch like they can’t see anything wrong.

“Just stop drowning and walk up the beach.” 

_ “Stop drowning”, _ Lance thinks to himself,  _ “that’s impossible by yourself.” _

And yet, he hears it so often, over and over again, that he begins to think he should be able to do it, to stop drowning, use more energy and swim to the shore all by himself. He’s convinced, as a young, impressionable teen, that he should be strong enough to do it alone. 

So Lance doesn’t ask for help. And when it comes to the people he loves now, he doesn’t know how to ask for it anymore. He watches them worry. He becomes embarrassed, isolates himself when the water gets high, scolds himself when his body _just_ _won’t swim why won’t he just swim?_

And the first time he feels someone try to pull him from the water, someone who doesn’t give up until Lance is sitting in the dry sand, who tells him he  _ doesn’t have to do it alone, _ he cries. 

He works on it, him and his friends and the one he might like more than a friend, and Lance slowly relearns how to ask for help and his friends learn how to give him that help. 

Lance wasn’t always the happy-go-lucky type of guy. The flirt, the comedian, the excited, reliable friend everyone knew they could count on. But now his friends knew, the people he  _ loved _ knew. 

When he was drowning, he trusted them to help him keep his head above the water.


End file.
